Brazil's electoral authority TSE said on Sunday it had temporarily paused vote counting in the country's presidential runoff after a Supreme Court justice ruled that voting hours be extended nationwide by two hours, Reuters reported. Polls were initially set to close at 5 p.m. Brasília time (2000 GMT) and will now close at 7 p.m. (2200 GMT), Xinhua also reported.

Source: Reuters via TradingView, Oct 25, 2026

Supreme Court Justice Cristiano Zanin accepted a request by Lula's campaign to extend voting, pointing to public transportation issues in three cities in the state of Bahia, the Associated Press reported via AAP. Lula had asked electoral authorities to extend voting in at least nine states after his campaign alleged some officials reduced election-day public transportation, affecting voters' ability to reach the polls — an allegation, reported here as the campaign's claim.

Source: AP via AAP News, Oct 25, 2026

Those figures, published by the TSE and carried by results trackers citing the electoral court, cover just 1,225 of 499,248 polling sections. They are the first returns only — not a representative national sample and not a projection — in a runoff where the final Datafolha and Quaest polls put Flávio Bolsonaro at 51% and Lula at 49% of valid votes, inside the margin of error.

Source: TSE figures via Depor / Poliwave live results, Oct 25, 2026

Voting itself had run all day in what polls called one of Brazil's closest presidential races, with both candidates casting their ballots in the morning. Read: Brazilians vote in the tight Lula–Flávio Bolsonaro runoff

Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign had also sought more time, asking for voting to be extended in at least three states and citing bad weather, AP reported. Earlier on Sunday, a court in Bahia — a Lula stronghold in the Northeast — ordered the arrest of a top transportation official in the city of Salvador over allegations that he directed a reduction in the city's bus fleet, AP said; the allegation has not been proven and is reported here as an allegation.

Source: AP via AAP News, Oct 25, 2026

Zanin later clarified that the extension applied to voting machines that had not already been closed, CNN Brasil reported — a distinction that matters because the order arrived after some stations had already sealed their machines and printed their results records, and Folha de S.Paulo reported confusion among poll workers in several locations.

Source: CNN Brasil and Folha de S.Paulo via Votendi, Oct 25, 2026

The pause injects fresh uncertainty into a Brazilian electoral process still grappling with the fallout from 2022, AP noted, when Jair Bolsonaro — Flávio's father — refused to concede defeat to Lula, his supporters later invaded government buildings, and he received a 27-year prison sentence for plotting a coup. Flávio Bolsonaro led the October 4 first round with about 47% of valid votes to Lula's about 45%, which is why every late vote in this runoff counts.

Source: AP via AAP News, Oct 25, 2026